A 66-metre mural in Cairo's Tahrir Square, created for Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Egypt, was painted over just hours before his arrival after drawing fierce backlash for depicting Pharaoh Tutankhamun and Queen Nefertiti with dark skin.
The work was among 40 murals commissioned to decorate the city for Xi's visit last month, carried out by the young volunteer group Rasmet Basma. According to Ahmed Moussa, 22, the group's founder, Cairo authorities asked the group to whitewash the piece. The painting was completed over five days in late August.
The group used the artificial intelligence programme ChatGPT to generate the design, which volunteers then reproduced on the wall. Moussa said the Cairo deputy governor and the district chief visited the work several times during its execution and appeared impressed, until the controversy erupted on social media.
"We used a bronze-gold tone that cast shadows on the faces at night, making them look dark-skinned," Moussa said, acknowledging the mistake of not consulting archaeology and art experts.
The controversy centres on Afrocentrism, a political movement holding that ancient Egyptian civilisation had black African origins and populations. Many social media users criticised the mural, with some asking whether those involved had ever seen what Nefertiti actually looked like, while others accused Afrocentric groups of exploiting the image to claim Egyptians support their views.
Zahi Hawass, former Egyptian minister of antiquities, said the volunteers should never have been allowed to paint in a location as important as Tahrir Square without expert supervision, and that public outrage was justified. He argued that claims linking ancient Egyptian civilisation to sub-Saharan Africa are unfounded, citing late-period temple carvings that show Egyptian kings depicted alongside captives from various parts of Africa, Libya, Syria and Palestine, with the king himself not shown with dark skin.
This is not the first time the skin colour of ancient Egyptians has stirred debate. In 2023, a Netflix documentary sparked an outcry after casting a dark-skinned actress as Cleopatra. In June 2024, a similar dispute erupted after a tour guide was said to have presented Afrocentric views on Egyptian history at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Monica Hanna, a prominent Egyptologist and associate professor of archaeology at the American University of Iraq–Baghdad, called Afrocentric claims "pseudoscience". Egyptian society, she said, has always been ethnically diverse, from the Nubian community in the south to Mediterranean populations in the north. "Egyptians have never had just one skin colour. We are not snow-white, nor are we cream-coloured," she said.
Walid Mahmoud, an AI researcher and African anthropology expert, said AI tools such as ChatGPT reflect the most widely shared information online rather than factually accurate information. They are built by companies in the US and Europe, he said, and the content they generate can shape how these audiences see themselves. "That is why we should never simply accept what it produces, especially when it concerns cultural identity and heritage," Mahmoud said.
Art critic Mostafa Eissa stressed that AI should be a tool only, never the decision-maker. He backed using technology without abandoning the human element in the artist, warning that letting such tools replace artists' skills could strip works of their originality.
This article was produced in collaboration with Egab.
